


Aeglos

by Kayasurin



Series: Rise of the Assassins [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Introspection, Jack is sleep deprived, M/M, Mention of Captivity, Mention of Insanity, Pitch and Seraphina had a messed up relationship, Road Trip, self discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3471746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayasurin/pseuds/Kayasurin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Sequel to Melian</i> - Now that they're free, Jack, Tooth, and Baby Tooth need to beat Pitch Black and the Templars to Jackson's grave. Only when they have secured his staff will they be able to protect the Brotherhood of Assassins, and more importantly to Jack, one Pooka by the name of E. Aster Bunnymund.</p><p>The long bus trip is exhausting, but it does give Jack some much needed time to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Shell gas wasn't exactly the best place to work, but Alan didn't know any gas station that was. Especially the night shift; sure it was good for his schedule, his classes were all afternoon, and the super didn't care if he brought his books in to study. It was usually pretty dead, maybe one or two truckers driving through on the 95, making time when the interstate was empty. He got to sleep all morning. And on the weekends, he didn't get tired so early like his buddies did.

The pay sucked, though. Sure, he got extra per hour because of the overnight, but it was still barely anything. Helped out some; between his pay check and tuition he wasn't surviving off nothing but peanut butter and ramen just yet.

It wasn't quite six in the morning when the couple stumbled in. Alan had been watching the clock, because at seven day shift came on and he caught the bus back to the residence, but he wasn't so tired he didn't notice them. He thought the guy was the gramps, at first; his hair was white and he moved like his bones hurt. The lady was what his buddies would've called a 'fine piece'; aesthetically pleasing, sure, but even if he was into that sort of thing the dyed hair would've turned him off.

Cliché as it sounded, he preferred natural beauty. Natives - and he was sure she was at least part Native American, her skin had that color to it - tended to have _great_ skin, from what he'd seen, makeup not required. If she'd grown her hair out and done it in a braid or something, worn clothes that weren't so much punk rock, he probably would've trailed after her like a puppy.

Or maybe not; the kid had her look. Mother and daughter, though who the albino was to them... father, maybe, though he didn't act like it. Brother? Brother-in-law?

The guy came up to the counter, while the Native lady and her kid browsed the shelves. The guy looked worse up close, his hair clipped short by a maniac - or a small child - and bags under his eyes big enough to hide a marching band in. Alan sympathized; there'd been days he'd looked that tired, too.

"Can I help you?" The signal for the pumps hadn't gone. Alan glanced out the window, casually he thought, looking for a car. The lot was empty, the way it'd been all night.

When he looked back at the albino guy, he was smiling. Apparently he hadn't been as casual as he'd thought. Though - wasn't there something about albinos having crap eyesight? Guy probably had contacts, Alan decided. Those special prescription sunglass kind. He'd read an article on it on Facebook, though he'd been more dead than alive, what with exams.

"Yeah," the guy said. "Do you know anything about the bus?"

Alan gave the guy a minute, and when he didn't elaborate, prompted, "You mean, like the history or the makeup of the engine, or...?"

Albino-guy coughed, and smiled. "Sorry. We've been traveling all night." In what car? "We need to get to the bus terminal, the main one."

Alan frowned, and then shrugged. "Well, you want the New Haven Union Station. Bus that's coming by in half an hour goes there, eventually."

The guy nodded, and rubbed one hand over his face. He looked clean shaven, but Alan was just able to hear stubble rasping against the guy's palm. That was useful. Probably made up for the bad eyesight, not having to shave every day.

"Sounds good," he said, and blinked several times, very hard. "Sorry, not awake yet. Have you got coffee?"

"It's trucker brew," Alan warned him, and pointed to the machine. "Pour your own. Dollar-fifty for a small," he added, since the guy didn't look like he had enough cash for a large.

"And the extra-large?" the guy asked, squinting at the handwritten price list.

"Four solid," Alan admitted.

The guy put eight dollars down, the bills worn and faded, and then poured two extra-large coffees. One was liberally mixed with cream and sugar, until it was almost the same color as the Native woman's skin - but not as alive looking - while the other he left black.

The Native lady came up at that point, her hands full of the cheap snack food Alan sometimes loaded up on for study sessions.

"Oh, you didn't have to," she said, even as she put the food on the counter. She reached for the coffee and drank deep, wincing a little but not as much as Alan expected.

The albino-guy drank his black coffee without so much as a twitch. And... huh. Must've set his cup in a draft or something, because it wasn't steaming anymore.

"Gotta eat sometime," he said, and smiled down at the little girl. "Right?"

The girl nodded, and tucked her hand into the albino-guy's. Maybe he was her father, or father figure. Not that it was any of his business.

Alan rang up the snacks, and accepted the money the guy held out. He made change, and watched the little family head out to the bus stop at the corner. There was a bench. Good for the kid, he decided, and wondered briefly what was up with them.

Then he put them out of his mind. He had an hour to kill before end of shift. Might as well study some before days came on and he could go home.

By the time day shift came on - Kate, who was old enough to be his grandmother and could probably pick him up with one hand - he'd forgotten about the little family entirely.

* * *

Jack was tired. They'd gone west-north-west, away from Pennsylvania - away from Burgess - and it seemed to have worked. He hadn't gotten the feeling like they were being watched, and as good as the Templars were - some of them were very good - they weren't anywhere near his level. It wasn't only Jackson's memories; it was his own experience in combination with the memories. He knew how to spot someone following him from Jackson's memories, but it was his own experience that brought everything up to the twenty-first century.

The New Haven Bus Terminal was all right; there were a few security cameras, mostly where the money was - so at the ticket station. Jack kept his head down while he bought the tickets, and maybe exaggerated how tired he was to keep the attendant from asking any questions.

Tooth looked up at him when he got back. "Please tell me you didn't lift any more wallets," she whispered.

"Nah," he said, almost as quietly. "Too noticeable here."

Tooth looked like she wasn't sure how to take that - on the one hand, his little spree of pick-pocketing had gotten them untraceable cash, and he'd been sure to pick his targets appropriately. There'd been one guy in a business suit who'd been lunching at a cafe, who'd managed to drive the waitress - or server? - to tears. She couldn't have been older than seventeen, at most. Jack had happily removed every last dollar in the man's wallet, returning it to him without his ever noticing.

The others he'd stolen from had been the same type. The kind who'd never tip a street kid, for one thing. The kind that liked pushing other people around, for another. Jack hadn't ever lifted wallets before, but that didn't seem to matter.

If he let himself think about it, the way Jack and Jackson seemed to be blending, merging into some new person he didn't know, worried him. So he didn't think about it. Fortunately, there had been plenty of stuff to keep himself distracted with. Like getting out of New York. Picking pockets. Watching for tails. They'd spent a day hopping on and off buses, and while Baby Tooth had slept for part of the night, Tooth and Jack had stayed awake.

Fortunately, the little girl was a good sport about the whole thing. It had to have been the months - years, really - in captivity that did it. Jack didn't know of any other kid that wouldn't be whining by now. But there she was; tired, clinging to her sister's hand like grim death, but otherwise cheerful. She beamed at everything, the people, the buses, and seemed perfectly content.

Jack sat down beside Baby Tooth, and wrapped one arm around her thin shoulders. "Bus'll leave at eight," he said. "Maybe eight-thirty if there's a delay. Ten hour ride, thereabouts. At that, we'll be in Johnstown."

Tooth looked bewildered. "And that's...?"

"Between Burgess and Johnstown is a forest and a lake," Jack explained. "The bus goes to Johnstown, not Burgess. So there'll be more walking."

Tooth sighed. She gave Baby Tooth a ritz-cracker-and-peanut-butter thing. "At least we can sleep on the bus."

Jack nodded. Well, they could sleep. He'd stay awake, keep his eye out... and think, he supposed.

He had a lot to think about.

* * *

They boarded the bus. Jack took it in, quickly and subtly. There was a toilet at the back. The schedule said they'd make periodic stops on the way, fifteen minutes each time. The emergency exits at the front, middle, and back.

When they sat down, Tooth was next to the window, Baby Tooth was in the middle, and he sat at the aisle.

They were halfway between the middle emergency exit and the back.

No one gave them a second glance.

* * *

Jack hadn't expected to sleep, not really. Baby Tooth was conked out, leaning against him. Her head was cutting off circulation in his arm from the bicep down, but he wasn't about to move for the world.

Jackson would have.

He turned his mind away from the thought, for the moment, and checked on Tooth. She was drowsing, probably the best she could do with the uncomfortable seats and, he suspected, her fear of being discovered and forced back to Pitch's lair. Even now, she and Baby Tooth were holding hands.

As a distraction, it wasn't much, but it kept him from thinking about Jackson. Instead, his thoughts turned to himself, his father and his sister.

God. What a messed up family they had been.

His sister was dead now. He thought her name had been Rose - Rosemary, maybe - but things weren't exactly clear, even now. The Animus might've unlocked his memories, but his years suppressing them had blurred them, or something.

He remembered her death, though. Maybe he'd look up news reports at the proper time, find out what'd been reported. If his father had been arrested.

He hoped so.

If his memories of before - before the ice, before his sister's death, before the hospital and foster care - were blurred, his memories of after seemed clearer. It made them worse, in a way. Continually being hungry, sometimes starving; as a kid he'd say that, that he was starving (because he'd upset his father, and been denied supper) but on the street he'd learnt what that meant. Starving was waking up day three without food, putting the cup out and hoping someone would drop enough coins in that he could afford something cheap. Starving was having his stomach stop growling and just pinch. Starving was feeling exhausted, all the time, and cold.

The cold had been the worst. From the first he'd been wary of the shelters, being a runaway and all. He'd stop in for food, when the begging had run thin and he hadn't been able to find food for a couple days, but he hadn't ever slept in one. Even during that big snowstorm that'd shut Manhattan down -

Even now, years later, he mentally shied away from the memory.

He'd lived through Jackson's training, and his years as an active Assassin, and not once had he endured anywhere close to what Jack had. He felt fully comfortable making that comparison, and decision. After all, he had both sets of memories. Who better to judge? And yes, he knew the point of Assassins' training wasn't to kill the student, but he couldn't help but resent his ancestor anyways.

Because he also knew what Jackson had thought. His ancestor had thought his life hard, devoted to a worthy goal but still hard. He'd thought forgoing a meal here and there was difficult, he thought staying up twenty-four, forty-eight hours straight was hard. He'd thought he'd been cold. He'd thought he'd been pushed to the breaking point time and time again.

He hadn't known _anything_.

Jack knew what it was to stay up, day after day, because to fall asleep was to die. He'd starved, he'd lost fingernails to frostbite - thankfully, the nails had eventually grown back - he'd hit his breaking point and gone past it because it was do or die.

Absently, he realized his palms hurt. After a moment, he spread his fingers, and checked the damage.

Blood tipped his nails, and his palms were bleeding. It wasn't serious, it'd stop in a few minutes, but if that wasn't a sign he needed to control himself, he didn't know what was.

Baby Tooth snuffled and shifted a little, before falling back asleep. Jack did his best to relax into the seat, and stared up at the ceiling.

Did he hate Jackson?

Maybe a little.

The miles rolled by while he wrestled with that thought. How could he hate Jackson, when he'd _been_ Jackson? When the man hadn't done anything to him?

Except - except Jackson... He'd had everything. Loving parents, father _and_ mother. He'd had his sister. He'd had his health, he'd had a safe home, he'd had good food and good work. He'd had friends and a brotherhood with the other Assassins. He'd had Bunny; and much though Jack wanted to hate Jackson for not loving Bunny, he couldn't. Jackson was straight, he hadn't been interested in men, but still. He'd had Bunny.

Jack... He couldn't remember his mother, and his father had tried to kill him, had killed his sister. He'd had crappy foster homes where he'd never known, from one day to the next, what'd happen to him. If there'd be a lock on the bedroom door, if he'd _need_ a lock on the bedroom door, if he'd be staying with the people for a week or a month or... And then he'd been on the street, and the only certainty had been that there wasn't any. No friends, no brotherhood, most definitely no Bunny.

So yeah, maybe he hated Jackson a little. There wasn't anything wrong with that, it was just envy that didn't have an outlet.

Jack looked down at Baby Tooth, and then over at Tooth. Maybe a sisterhood instead, he decided. He'd be the sassy gay man in the group.

And Bunny...

Jack half-closed his eyes, too wary to give up his sight entirely. Bunny... Bunny was a complicated subject. E. Aster Bunnymund, co-leader of the Assassins, Jackson's best friend and, Jack was sure, the love of his life. He'd never met the man.

Complicated was maybe a bit of an understatement.

He wasn't even sure Bunny was still alive.

Tooth had said there was every reason to think that Bunny had survived, that being stabbed through the heart wouldn't take him out, but - stabbed through the _heart_. Jack wanted to believe, he did, and Jackson had seen Bunny get hurt badly and survive, but...

Stabbed through the _heart_.

The bus began to slow. Jack about jumped out of his skin, and he stared out at - oh. Bus terminal. Scheduled stop.

"Jack?" Baby Tooth yawned and scrubbed at one eye with her fist. "We there yet?"

"Nope. Pit stop. Need the bathroom?"

She nodded, and snuffled. "'m thirsty."

Well, now he knew what he'd be doing during the fifteen minute break. "I'll get us some water. Tooth?"

She nodded, and they got off the bus. Jack put himself in line at the small concession... it wasn't even a stand, just a counter with a few candy bars and a small fridge full of bottles and cans. He grabbed three bottles of water, and dug into the dwindling supply of money. The water wasn't too expensive, though his street instincts had him mentally grumbling all the way back to the bus. He hadn't been long, but Tooth and Baby Tooth were already waiting for him.

They got back on, and managed to reclaim the seats they'd been using before. Jack passed out the water bottles, and Tooth pulled out the last of the snack food they'd picked up.

"We'll have a better meal when we reach Johnstown," Jack promised Baby Tooth. "Whatever you want."

She pulled open the snack cracker package, very carefully, and seemed to give the matter due thought. "A happy meal?" she asked.

"That's not a bad idea." Tooth scowled at him. "Whoa, hey, really. We're going to be burning a lot of calories. Probably more than we'll get from the food, to be honest. It's gonna be fast, cheap, and tasty."

"I guess..." Tooth shook her head. "How do you figure that?"

Memories of Jackson going to town on sweets, mostly, while losing weight...

"Experience," he said, with a particular emphasis he hoped she picked up as meaning 'Animus experience'. She seemed to; she stared at him for a moment, and then nodded.

"So happy meal?" Baby Tooth asked again.

"Yes," Tooth said. "We'll have happy meals."

The little girl contrived to look conniving. "And Disneyworld?"

"Hey, let's get home before we travel some more," Jack protested. Home... the Warren. Yeah, he supposed that could be considered home.

Baby Tooth gave him her water to open.

The two ladies distracted him admirably from his thoughts for about an hour, before Baby Tooth conked out again and Tooth returned to her drowsing. Jack, with nothing better to do, practiced with the ice powers he seemed to have acquired.

They weren't like Jackson's - for one thing, the most he could do was, it seemed, a faint layer of frost up the interior of the water bottle, and it melted almost right away. It also tired him out almost immediately, draining his scant reserves so that, whether he wanted to or not, he drowsed for what had to have been at least an hour. By that point, they were pulling into another stop, and he resolved not to experiment with the icing ability until... later.

Baby Tooth needed another bathroom break, and at this point so did Jack. There wasn't enough time for that and a stop at the concession stand here, so they got back on the bus and settled in again.

Once more, Baby Tooth conked out - maybe it was something to do with the way the bus rumbled and swayed? Jack found it mildly nauseating, himself, though not enough to be bothered with - and Tooth seemed content to look out the window. Besides, Jack reminded himself. It wasn't like the things they needed to talk about could be, in public.

Of course, that left him with his thoughts.

Jack... turned his mind away from thoughts of Bunny, for the moment; there wasn't much he wanted to think about, but Bunny was lower on the list at the moment.

Not because of Bunny, of course, but - that wasn't... He wasn't supposed to be thinking about that.

He sighed. Tooth glanced at him, but he shrugged and she nodded. Around them was the noise of the bus, the people on the bus - it was about half-full, and the only people talking were up at the front, everyone else seemed to be reading, or something equally quiet - and the noise from outside the bus. His lower back was starting to hurt from the seat, and he really had no idea how Baby Tooth could sleep in that position.

 _What_ was he _doing_? Well, he was traveling to Burgess with his fellow escapee-from-the-Templars and her little sister, to find a mystic key and keep Pitch Black, leader of the Templars and mass murderer on an unprecedented scale, from getting a hold of said key. It sounded like the summary for a movie, a summer blockbuster with a lot of explosions and very little plot. Of course, if this was a movie, Tooth would be his love interest, Baby Tooth probably wouldn't exist... or would be a dog... and while he'd have a tragic back-story it wouldn't be anything like his life actually was.

But other than that. Once he had the key, what then? The Assassins existed, they had to exist, but... what did he want?

The part of him that wanted nothing more than to throw himself into the midst of the Assassins, join the brotherhood once more - was that him? Or Jackson? The determination to hunt Pitch Black down and make him pay - Jackson'd had something of a vengeful streak in him, though it'd always been channelled by his training. Jack had found it best to keep his head down, not make waves.

But... He looked down at Baby Tooth. There was a part of him, a part he wasn't sure how to label, that thought about what Baby Tooth had gone through and wanted to make someone, anyone, _bleed_.

Because a little girl had been hurt, and scared, and locked up. She'd held it together, and now they were free, but still. _Still_. Someone had to pay for what'd been done, and the damage he'd done to the security guards wasn't anywhere near enough.

He... he didn't think that came from Jackson. For all his powers over ice and cold, Jackson had always seemed to have a hot temper, to Jack. But the rage he currently felt... it wasn't a hot rage, to burn fast and then burn out. It was patient, willing to wait so long as the payoff was worth it. That... Jack hadn't ever thought of himself as having a temper, but it didn't seem to be something that belonged to Jackson, so it had to be him.

So if the rage was him, what else belonged to him? And what didn't?

The problem was, he couldn't trust himself, his own mind. Tooth had told him some of the previous... subjects, forced to relive Jackson's memories through the Animus. The others had all gone insane, sooner or later, committing suicide. Jack hadn't, at least not obviously. He didn't know how the others had experienced things, but for him it'd been like watching a movie and reading a book. He'd been able to see everything, he'd known Jackson's thoughts, but he'd always known that it wasn't _him_.

It could have been something as simple as the difference in their sexual orientations; Jackson had been as straight as it was possible to get, and Jack the complete opposite. Gayer than a flaming fruit basket thrown into the sun, wasn't that how he'd put it to Pitch the one time? Or... he didn't know, but either way, he'd kept his mind.

 _Probably_ kept his mind, he reminded himself.

There were so many reasons to think that he'd lost it, of course. The entire scheme - it was crazy, thinking he'd be able to get to Burgess by bus ahead of someone who could probably - hell, _would_ \- take a helicopter there.

If Pitch Black knew what the key was... and where it was.

That was probably why he'd been reviewing Jackson's final memories, over and over, before Jack and Tooth had formulated an escape and enacted their rampage. Figuring out where the key was, and failing that, figuring out where the lake was. Jackson's body had sunk to the bottom of the lake, and from Jackson's memories and his own, Jack knew that it was pretty much impossible for anyone to have recovered his body for burial. The lake was just too deep, one of those out-of-place geographical anomalies. If it'd been anywhere else in the world, it probably would've been called a... turn? No, tarn, that was it.

Maybe. Geography was hardly his strong suit, especially considering his lack of education in... pretty much everything.

He began massaging his fingers with one hand. How had he learnt how to do that? Was that him, his knowledge, working out tiny knots of tension and easing stiff joints? Or was this from Jackson?

He didn't know.

How was he supposed to know?

And if he didn't know... what then? Who was he?

He'd known who he was, once. He'd been Jack Frost, homeless guy, running scared from so many things. Looking back at who he'd been, he figured he'd had another four or five years, tops, before losing himself to drugs, to drink, to prostitution... Even to death. The person he'd been would never have been able to fit into society, get out of the streets. He hadn't had the knowledge, practical and theoretical, to handle staying in a shelter for a night, never mind doing all the normal-people things. Getting a job, doing grocery shopping. Having a place of his own, with a roof overhead and four sturdy walls.

That'd changed. He'd had Jackson's memories shoved into him, from early childhood on. If Jack Frost had been a mostly-wild urchin, emotionally younger than his years, Jackson had been a sleek and polished jungle cat, with the emotional maturity most people never showed until their fifties... if then. He'd been able to mingle with nearly every level of society in several countries and cultures, and if he'd settled on being a shepherd, it'd been because that was his preference, not his limitation.

The two were so different - Jack Frost, Jackson Overland - and somehow they'd been merged into one being inside him.

Jack - was he really Jack? - looked over at Tooth. What was going through her head? It had to be easier for her - she didn't have a second set of memories, another person, living in the back of her mind. But... wouldn't that also make it harder? There was nothing to... what? To distract her, he decided. She'd been a prisoner for at least one year, probably longer, separated from her sister the entire time. She'd spent her entire time having to deal with Pitch Black breathing down her neck.

She must have been so frightened.

And Baby Tooth. Alone, visited only by the governess, but otherwise left alone. Her only encouragement coming from her sister's infrequent - and, no doubt, censored - letters. She must have been so brave.

They had both been so brave. Were still being brave. They were following him, Baby Tooth because she trusted him, Tooth because... because she trusted him too. They believed in him.

Jack looked down at his hands. They were... not Jackson's hands.

He flexed his fingers, which were longer and narrower than Jackson's had been. His fingertips were pointy, as a result, not the blunt curves Jackson's had been.

His hands were not Jackson's hands.

He didn't have the scars. The muscles in his wrists, and forearms, were like cable wire instead of thick, chunky rope. His skin was paler; partly because he'd spent months inside, never seeing unfiltered sunlight, but even when he'd been living on the street he'd been pale. As a child, he'd had light brown hair and blue eyes, while Jackson had been dark brown and darker brown.

Looking into a mirror had been like looking at Jackson's ghost, but now Jack wasn't so sure.

His hands were not Jackson's hands.

Were they strong enough?

Was he?

He looked over at the girls, one asleep and the other lost in her thoughts, and his heart clenched. They were strong, both of them so strong, but... but Baby Tooth was just a kid, and Tooth had to protect her sister. And she was worn, he could see it in her face now that she wasn't making a show for Baby Tooth. There were fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes from squinting, more between her eyebrows and across her forehead. Her mouth was bracketed by yet more lines, and none of them were from smiles.

As strong as Baby Tooth was, she was a kid and she needed her sister. And as strong as Tooth was, she was tired, worn down by fear, by what she'd been forced to do and see.

Was he strong enough to... to support them? To help them? Protect them, when he could?

Jackson wouldn't have been.

Jack stopped, and his breath caught in his throat. Tooth glanced over at him, but he was busy examining the thought.

Tooth needed someone who could stand with her, not for her. Jackson... as enlightened as he'd been, he'd also been a sexist bastard. He couldn't have ever accepted Tooth as an equal, let alone as someone smarter than he was - and she was brilliant. Women hadn't been, exactly, people to Jackson, had they?

And he hadn't much liked children.

Jack... He looked up at Tooth, and then down at Baby Tooth, and his heart clenched again.

"Oh," he breathed, and blinked. If anything happened to either of them...

Rage, as cold and implacable as a blizzard, as _that_ blizzard, stirred and unfolded. Even without a threat in front of him, his fingers wanted to hook into claws and his lips wanted to curl.

Yes, he decided, his thoughts crystalline and cold. He was strong enough. He had to be. He _cared_ for these two, and in this moment, at this time, he knew that he'd die for either of them, but _only_ if it meant whatever was threatening went down with him.

Jack Frost was strong enough.

Jackson Overland would never have managed to last this long.

He'd lasted. He was sane, still. With more knowledge, more experience, but still himself.

He lifted his chin, and turned to Tooth.

"I am Jack Frost," he said, and reached over to rest one hand on her shoulder.

Tooth smiled, her teeth very white. "I'm glad," she said.

They didn't talk again until the bus turned into the next scheduled stop.

* * *

Jack handed out the snacks and bottles of water he'd picked up - this stop's concession stand had been a little bigger, with more options, so he'd splurged a little. Baby Tooth was beginning to droop - it'd been a long trip, without a lot of time to rest beforehand - but she perked up a little at the sight of red licorice. They ate their crackers first - "Lunch," Baby Tooth joked, though it was getting on towards four, maybe five in the afternoon - and then shared the bag of licorice between the three of them.

Once more, as the bus got on its way, Baby Tooth drifted off. Tooth wrapped one arm around her sister's shoulders, and stared out the window, a variant of Mona Lisa's smile playing about her lips. Jack was pleased to see it; Tooth needed more smiles in her life, more joy.

They were free now. He'd have to find out what brought her joy, and then give it to her. As much as he could.

But first, they had to successfully get the master key out of the lake.

If it was still there.

Jack settled back into his seat. Getting down to the bottom of the lake would be hard. It was deep, had to be. Jackson's memories painted the lake as cold even during the worst summer heat wave, without much in the way of fish or shore. Pennsylvania was hardly the scuba capital of the country, but maybe a sporting goods store would have something... Flippers, and swimming goggles at least.

Jack probably could've swum to the bottom without the goggles, and he didn't think he'd have any trouble with his eyes open under water, but a surprising twist of squeamishness had risen its head, cringing the entire time. It'd been a long time ago, but there'd been a rotting body in that lake, or had been. He didn't want that water to touch his eyes.

Dead body germs. _Euwww_.

All that assumed that the staff was still intact. An Assassin could have come and gotten it - Sanderson, maybe, though that seemed to be a very _formal_ name for the man - or it could've rotted away.

If he didn't find the staff... They'd regroup and come up with a new idea. At least it'd mean Pitch couldn't get hold of it either.

If they did find the staff... if it still worked...

Jack's stomach twisted. Time to think about what he'd been avoiding thinking about.

The other Assassins.

The other Assassins were... negligible. Jack wasn't sure if he'd join the Brotherhood, if he'd help out now and then, if he'd be happier being support staff. He wouldn't know until it came to that point, and besides, the Assassins might have - probably had - changed with the times. They didn't matter, they were a factor but it was such a small one he felt perfectly safe writing them off.

Bunny, though...

E. Aster Bunnymund, co-founder and leader of the Assassins, last of the Pooka.

He wasn't Jack's first crush, not by a long shot - that went to Ian Miller, now that he had his childhood memories back - but he was the first person Jack had ever thought about being... close too. Before, he'd only admired from afar... again, if no one counted Ian Miller. But then again, that'd been kindergarten, he was pretty sure that was the emotional equivalent of a child's first tricycle to an adult's dirt bike.

Bunny had loved Jackson - Jack had watched from behind Jackson's eyes, and he'd seen it. Bunny had been willing to _die_ for Jackson - maybe he had died. Tooth had suggested that Bunny had survived, alien physiology and all, and then the things Pitch had said as they escaped also suggested it, but...

But circumstantial evidence, as good as it was, wasn't _proof_.

If Bunny was dead...

Jack closed his eyes. He'd grieve; he'd done a bit of that after reliving the memory the first time, though being forced to experience it over and over again had _really_ not helped. So he'd grieve, and move on, and probably join the Assassins in order to go after Pitch. Kill the bastard, one way or another; that'd settle his need for revenge on behalf of Tooth and Baby Tooth, too.

If Bunny was alive...

... Why did that thought make him afraid?

Jack's stomach twisted. Because Bunny had loved _Jackson_. Had cherished every moment he'd spent with Jack's ancestor. Bunny had loved Jackson more than his own happiness; he'd stood up for Jackson at the wedding, seeming overjoyed at the event instead of the sorrow Jack had seen lurking in his eyes.

Jack was not Jackson.

Bunny didn't even know Jack existed.

Before that final memory, Jack realized, he'd dreamed - assumed - he'd escape and find Bunny and slide into that love as Jackson-but-better. It'd been a childish assumption, he supposed. Well, no, there was no supposing, it _had_ been childish. Even if Bunny was still grieving for Jackson - and after three centuries, that seemed just a little farfetched - Jack would never have fit into a Jackson shape. It wouldn't have been fair, to either of them, to pretend to be Jackson. It would have hurt, and they would have quickly resented each other.

Now, though...

Jack huffed. He was pretty sure he loved Bunny. Because... because it wasn't just the physical attraction, strange as it was to feel it about fur, and long ears, and a cute, fluffy tail. Because it was the emotional. He wanted to see Bunny _happy_. That desire he felt for Tooth, to find things that made her happy and bring her as much as he could carry, that was doubled, quadrupled, quintupled when it came to Bunny. More than that, he wanted to _be_ what made Bunny happy.

But if he didn't make Bunny happy - if seeing him reminded Bunny of Jackson, or any other unhappy memory...

Jack closed his eyes. He'd leave. If that was the right decision, if that made things easier for Bunny, he'd go. Or whatever it took to make things okay. He'd do what Bunny had done, maybe, keep his feelings secret. Keep his sexual orientation secret, so Bunny wouldn't worry.

That was probably the way to go, to start. No need to - to grab Bunny, the way he'd fantasized, press his lips against the Pooka's, dig his fingers into that plush fur... and he was in a public place and sitting next to a small child, he _really_ needed to think about something else.

He'd start things off... calm. Friendly. Without the sexual harassment the surprise kissing really was.

Of course, it all depended on Bunny still being alive.

Jack hoped. But hoping - it felt like he was holding a knife with no hilt. Right now he wasn't hurt, but one little slip and he'd bleed.

The bus stopped for the final time before Johnstown, and as if that was a sign Jack's energy bottomed out. His thoughts drifted, circling around this point or that, but he'd made his decisions and there wasn't much more he could do.

When the bus pulled in to Johnstown, Jack Frost stood up and escorted his two ladies, Tooth and Baby Tooth, off the bus. McDonalds was nearby. He treated the girls to whatever they wanted, and once they'd finished, he started to scout out a safe place for them to sleep.

Today had been a long day. Tomorrow promised to be just as long, if not worse.

And they needed their sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congrats, this is fourteen pages long out of twenty-eight - so yes. Two chapters, each fourteen pages long. You're welcome. Thank CleverCorgi for the polishing edits, as ever. Next and final chapter on Friday.


	2. Chapter 2

"When's the last time you slept?" Tooth asked. She sorted through the wad of bills, fives at the top, the larger bills at the bottom. There were two or three fifties, Jack thought, but he'd put her in charge of the money for a reason. Things were maybe starting to look a little fuzzy.

"Before we escaped?" he suggested. That had been... three days ago now? Two, for sure. He was pretty sure... yeah, because they'd traveled all day yesterday, and he hadn't slept the night before. They'd traveled the day before that, and he hadn't slept the night before that. This was day three after the escape. Right.

Right?

And he couldn't remember the last time he'd slept a full night, in their lovely prison-apartment. Since before reliving Bunny's... injury, death, he didn't know. So it'd been a while.

Tooth frowned. "I can hardly tell," she admitted.

"It's because my hair's so pale." Jack stroked his chin, the bristles rough against his fingertips. "You can't see the scruff."

"Your hands aren't shaking." Tooth folded the money and put the wad in her pocket, and then left her hand there too. Not that there were any pickpockets as good as Jack, unless they were Assassin-trained as well.

It was strange, how easily even pick-pocketing came to him. He'd worked for the strength, the endurance, the flexibility and agility - but he'd never tried picking a pocket before their escape, and it'd been as easy as breathing. He couldn't even imagine how one of Jackson's lesser-used skills had transferred over, but it did make gathering their money easier.

Any coin went straight to the nearest beggar. Coin was heavy, dirty, and pointless for them to carry around. Better to give it to people who needed it.

The same way it was better to pick-pockets of jerks. There'd been a group of guys catcalling and insulting women. He'd lightened their wallets - and stolen their belts, for good measure, just as a patrol car started down the road.

He hoped the jerks enjoyed the public indecency charges.

"We've got enough," Tooth said. Jack blinked and dragged his wandering mind back on track, and blinked at her.

"What?"

"We've got enough. Come on. Let's go find a sporting goods store."

Jack nodded, and shoved up off the bench. The world dipped and swayed for a moment, and it felt like his skin wasn't holding all of him inside his body anymore, but the moment passed. Tooth remained at the bench while he headed across the short strip of grass.

"Baby Tooth," he called. She popped her head over the wooden railing and waved. "Time to go."

"Oh," she moaned, but obediently headed for the slide. It wasn't the big, tall one, so he let her take it alone, instead of hovering at the bottom like he wanted to. She hit the ground like a champ, and ran over to him.

"Did you see?"

Jack swung her up into the air and then onto his hip. "Yup," he said, and headed back towards Tooth. "I saw. You did great."

Baby Tooth caught a handful of his hair. "I'm going to be magic like you," she said. "And jump and spin and kick and punch and pow!"

"Oh boy." Tooth would not be happy about that.

Tooth was, in fact, frowning at the both of them. "You look horrible," she told Jack, and then smiled at Baby Tooth. "You, however, look lovely."

Baby Tooth giggled, and attempted to straighten Jack's hair. Her attempts didn't much help, but it made her happy. Who was he to argue?

"I've got a plan," Jack promised. "Just look annoyed... have we got enough for a kid's version, too?"

"Actually, we should." Tooth raised her eyebrows. Jack smiled in response. At that, she looked annoyed but resigned, clearly ready to let him lead the way in the plan he wasn't sharing.

"Sporting goods store," Jack said, and considered their surroundings.

It took a quick stop in a public library, and a fifteen minute search on Google - it would've been faster, but Jack suspected the computer was older than he was - before they had a destination in mind. According to the store's page, it was having a sale and everything.

"Does your story explain why we'd want this stuff in autumn?" Tooth asked. She hunched her shoulders against the mild wind.

"Is it autumn?" It didn't feel that cold yet. Maybe the start of it... though one or two trees were starting to turn colors, at the edges. Weird, he felt comfortable enough. Maybe it was only his time on the streets; once you'd weathered blizzards without shelter, mild autumn chill was nothing.

"Yeah." Tooth eyed him strangely, but before he could interpret her expression, she looked away again. "So, do you have an explanation?"

Jack grinned at Baby Tooth. "Your sister needs to look cranky when we enter the store," he said. "Think you can look excited?"

Baby Tooth giggled, and nodded. "I'm tired though," she admitted.

"That's fine. Tired and excited is good."

Tooth huffed beside him, but when he peeked, she was smiling.

The store was on the edge of downtown, and had the faintly shabby appearance Jack always associated with such things. It was obvious that the store had a wide idea of what entailed a sport; golf clubs sat next to archery gloves, and in the next window were footballs, soccer balls, and what Jack recognized as a horseback riding boot. It was equally obvious that whoever owned the building put the money into the sports and not into the building's appearance. The paint was faded and peeling along the window sills, and someone had tried spraying rude words over the brickwork. Someone else had sprayed corrections for spelling and grammar.

Jack suspected either the store owner or building manager, if they weren't one and the same person.

Tooth handed him the money before they went in. Once inside, Jack left Tooth by the door, with Baby Tooth, and hurried over to the counter.

"Hey," he said, voice down but still loud enough for Tooth to hear him. "Do you have snorkelling gear? Adult, kid...?"

The person behind the counter - clearly they were aiming for the androgynous look, and in Jack's opinion, they had hit it perfectly - stared at him. "Snorkelling...?"

Jack looked back at Tooth, who was looking wonderfully cranky, and ran a hand back through his hair. "Yeah, our flight leaves at... technically tomorrow morning." He snuck a quick peek at the employee's nametag - Lee, nice and non-indicative, but at least better than 'person behind the counter' - while Lee huffed.

"Airlines're a pain, aren't they?" Lee asked. "Where you headed?"

"Italy." Jack raked his fingers through his hair again, and followed Lee from the counter to further back in the store. "And they'll have snorkelling gear there, I'm sure of it, but, well." He glanced back again, and waved at Tooth and Baby Tooth. "Ready to pick out some goggles?" he asked Baby Tooth.

"You almost forgot," she said, with the appropriate level of young-child-seriousness. She turned to Lee. "We're already halfway done flying in planes and we left _all_ our swimming stuff at home."

Lee smiled, while Jack did his best to look frazzled and apologetic.

"Well why don't you come over here... Anything for you, miss?"

Tooth shook her head. "Much as I like swimming, I prefer swimming pools. Maybe a small pair of goggles."

Yeah, for their cover... and hey, it looked like the water gear was all discounted. Jack started looking over the snorkelling goggles and fins, which ranged from ten to fifty percent off. After a bit, they settled on a pair of red goggles for Tooth. Baby Tooth found a child's snorkelling gear set complete with The Little Mermaid theme, and snatched it up at once.

Jack found an adult set in blue and black. He also picked up a fanny pack, no doubt meant for bicyclists, and added it to the pile. "For my wallet," he told Tooth, even though she hadn't said anything.

Then again, her expression spoke volumes.

Lee tallied everything up for them. Jack paid with cash, Lee bagged their things - Baby Tooth insisted on carrying her flippers personally - and they left the store.

After a few blocks, Baby Tooth handed Jack her bag. "Are we going to use these for real?" she asked.

"I don't see why not, though not right away." Jack looked up at Tooth. "Well?"

"Not bad," she said. "Just enough information for him - him? Her? - to make up a story, without you having to do much of anything."

"Can we get something to eat?" Baby Tooth asked, before they could start debating over what Lee's gender had been. Not that it mattered, really, but it was something to talk about while walking.

"Sure thing," Jack said. "We've got enough money left for some street dogs, what do you think?"

Once they'd found a street grill, Jack got Baby Tooth distracted with her food. Tooth stood next to him while he started loading on the condiments.

"What's the fanny pack for?" she asked.

"Dive weight," Jack told her, and started eating.

* * *

Baby Tooth sniffed, and her chin dug into the back of his shoulder. "Why do we have to do this at night?" she asked.

"Because I want to be there for the morning, and we're going to have to walk a ways," Jack said. Tooth had hold of his belt; her night vision wasn't as good as his. Besides that, he had Jackson's memories of navigating unfamiliar terrain during the night. It wasn't easy, but he could manage.

Baby Tooth didn't reply for several minutes. "But I'm not walking," she finally said.

"No, because you should be taking a nap." She was heavy, and would only get heavier the longer they walked, but Jack wasn't about to ask a kid to hike through the woods all night. They'd get to the lake by morning, thereabouts. Hard enough for an adult with hiking experience - which Tooth didn't have - but yeah, no, kids should not have to do that sort of thing.

Unless they wanted to and were properly prepared.

And he really was tired.

Jack shook his head, carefully so as not to whip Baby Tooth's face with his hair, and focused on their surroundings.

It was twilight under the trees, which weren't nearly as overgrown as he remembered from Jackson's time. They were currently on a walking path, which probably had something to do with it. It was easier for Tooth, at least, and so long as it continued in the right general direction Jack would happily stay on the path all night.

The smells had changed from Jackson's time, though Jack thought he remembered them from his childhood, and spending hours shivering on the lake bank until his father relented and let him and his sister back into the car. There was the scent of loam, with a faintly bitter hint of turning leaves. A bit of flowers - they were walking past a patch of what he thought was goldenrod, probably not ragweed - and a touch of car exhaust, even as far as they were under the trees. It wasn't _bad_ , just different.

He thought Tooth was having more trouble seeing the path than he was; she stumbled, occasionally, sometimes falling forward into his side. Jack figured he'd be black and blue on that side, shoulder to elbow, but so far no one had fallen.

Baby Tooth fell quiet, either watching the forest, or drowsing, he didn't know. She was a warm weight against his back, though, and feeling her breath flutter against his ear made him feel warm inside. He hadn't ever thought about kids; that, like dreams of the future, happened to other people, with the addition that he was gayer than a dozen rainbow unicorns, but taking care of Baby Tooth was planting seeds of an idea.

He probably should have stopped to let them rest; charging ahead like this was just painful for everyone involved. Baby Tooth was being a good sport, and Tooth knew why they had to hurry, but...

But they couldn't stop. If they stopped, Jack wasn't sure he'd be able to start up again. Or worse - what if Pitch showed up and got hold of the staff before they did? At the very least, once they had the staff and got access to the Warren, they could rest then. Even if it had been abandoned, it'd still be a safe place to recover from their captivity and flight.

Besides, there was no way Jack could steal enough money through pick-pocketing for them to do more than a night or two at a hotel, and he wasn't about to make Baby Tooth sleep rough ever again. One night had been hard as it was, and he'd stayed up the entire time to keep an eye out. In retrospect, he should've had them make up names and stay in a motel anyways, no matter what fears he had about Pitch tracking them through electronic records.

On top of that, if they didn't stay in a hotel... Jack was the first to know just how exhausting being out on the streets was. No, there wasn't anywhere safe to rest until they reached the Warren. So they had to keep moving.

If it meant going without a little sleep, well, it was hardly the first time.

Night had quickly taken over while they walked, and now Jack navigated more by a sense of where the open air was than sight. Tooth's grip on his belt tightened, until her knuckles dug into his hip. Bruises there too, he suspected, and put it out of his mind.

The walk was almost pleasant, though, to him. He suspected Tooth had another opinion entirely. But for him... it was almost like being home, in a way. Jackson had spent a lot of time in these woods, or ones very much like it. The wind in the branches overhead created a kind of music, and if it was dark, well, he knew how to trust his senses. There weren't any dangerous animals in the woods, he didn't think, at least none he couldn't handle on his own. Coyotes maybe. Bears, if this was anywhere near a landfill, though he doubted it.

The path began to turn away from the direction they needed to go. The ground began to rise, and ferns, creeper vines, and the odd bush began to impede their progress.

"Jack," Tooth whispered. "Can't we stop?"

"You don't have to whisper," he said back. Something small skittered away, rustling old leaves. Probably a rabbit. "Look, Tooth, it's not that bad. Just hang onto my belt."

Tooth muttered something about turning back, and crazy men, but kept up with him. Jack had to keep reminding himself to stay slow; it felt like he could have gone three times as fast, except for Tooth. She was probably regretting the walk through the forest at night.

Jack didn't. Now that they were away from the path, the trees were a little thicker, and the underbrush had thinned out. There were more ferns, but fewer vines and bushes. He stepped in what he hoped was a mushroom at one point, and there were probably dozens of other mushrooms all around. His sense of where the tree trunks were kept him from walking headlong into any of them, and he also managed to avoid the irregular humps and dips in the ground. There was the odd sound of a small animal avoiding them, and overhead was the occasional flutter of bat wings.

It was peaceful and familiar.

"We'll have to go camping," he decided.

"Camping?"

"Yeah." Yeah, he could see it. Him and Bunny, Tooth and Baby Tooth. Teaching Baby Tooth how to roast marshmallows and hotdogs over a fire, teaching her - and Tooth, if she didn't know them - the constellations. Going for night-time walks with Bunny. Setting up a tent for the girls, since Jack figured he and Bunny would sleep under the stars.

They'd go fishing, hiking, take pictures with cheap cameras and get bug-bitten. They'd swim in the wild lake or river, whichever they were camped near. He'd show Baby Tooth how to track animals... Bunny would show her how to tell a plant good to eat from one that was bad... Tooth would laugh and smile and not be constantly looking over her shoulder.

It'd be fun. They'd have fun.

The rosy picture kept him going for several more hours, until something else intruded. It started off as a prickling along the back of his neck, as his hair did its best to stand on end. And then the forest around him got quiet. Even the sounds of insects faded away. The wind seemed to stop blowing, and the air felt colder, dry and brittle.

"Well," he murmured, suddenly reluctant to speak up. "We're getting close."

"We are?" He felt Tooth move closer. "What is that?"

An old, abandoned village, he didn't say. "Pitch had a temporary lair around here, once," he said. Where he'd slept with Seraphina... which, again, ew. "Nice to know the wards are still working."

"You don't think he -"

"No." Probably not.

He hoped not.

Jack decided that no, Pitch would not notice them crossing the village; the creepy was caused not by Pitch, but by the long ago massacre. And maybe he didn't believe in ghosts, but he didn't _not_ believe in ghosts either. The faintly glowing orbs he saw out of the corner of his eye could have been nothing more than his imagination.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," he muttered.

"What was that?" Tooth demanded.

"Just trying to figure out wards," Jack lied.

He hurried them through the ruined village as quickly as he dared. The not-there glowing orbs seemed to watch them go. It was telling, he thought, that the not-there orbs didn't go near the ruined church - which he thought was still standing, the way it had when Jackson had briefly seen it.

He relaxed once they were in the forest proper again. The oppressive and creepy feeling ended, and he could all but see Tooth relax, and never mind that it was dark as the inside of a cat at the moment.

"That wasn't wards," Tooth said.

"Old village," Jack replied. "Someone, neither side would admit or accuse who, massacred a bunch of innocents. Before Jackson's time."

And just as unnerving as ever.

He looked back, once, but wasn't able to see anything. That patch of forest was no lighter, and no darker, than what surrounded it.

Even so... he was very glad to put a hill or two between him and the ruined village.

* * *

Dawn found them pushing through the last few meters to the lake's edge. Tooth regarded the distant highway with a wry smile.

"You know, we could've just gone to Burgess first," she pointed out.

"Bus lines don't run there," Jack countered. He carefully lowered Baby Tooth to the ground. She seemed to be boneless, the way of exhausted children everywhere, and he was hard pressed not to hold her too tightly, or drop her. "We'd have had to walk either way, and the forest at least was a straight shot."

"Maybe." Tooth put down the plastic bags holding the snorkelling gear, and their scant food supply. "Wait until it's fully light out before you go swimming, okay?"

"Might as well. You can't see the lake from the road," he added. Personal experience had taught him that.

Tooth nodded, and stretched out on the grass beside Baby Tooth. In only a minute, maybe two, she was asleep. It'd been a long night, Jack decided. For both of them, though he wasn't about to take a nap. With his luck, the moment he did, something horrible would happen. A rainstorm. The police. Pitch.

Jack settled down in a cross-legged position, what part of him wanted to call an 'Indian pose'... no doubt thanks to Jackson's memories. He did his best to ignore it, and focus on the shifting colors of the sky. Over in the east the sky was beginning to turn ruby and ochre, while the west was still midnight blue and violet. Yet in what felt like no time at all the east brightened, the sky turning gold, and then seemingly white, while overhead and to the west the colors shifted until the sky was robin's egg blue, the color intense enough Jack wanted to soak his clothes in it to wear.

The air was crisp and clean, and the dew spotting the grass frosted over in his vicinity, though once out of arms reach it remained liquid and glittering in the light. Jack didn't feel any drain on his energy, so the frosting grass either didn't take much effort, was natural, or some combination of the two. Or something else entirely, what did he know?

The frost around him melted as the sun rose into the sky. Jack closed his eyes, as much to rest them as savour the moment.

Baby Tooth stirred first; she'd slept the night through, even with the creepy village ruin, so it was inevitable, really. She yawned loudly, and began rummaging through the bags for snack crackers.

Jack smiled, and stretched. In a way, sitting quietly seemed to have gotten him another wind, though at this point he'd lost count of how many he'd had. He accepted a package of crackers and began to eat them slowly.

Tooth was the last to wake, and took a water bottle before accepting the last of the cracker packages.

"By the end of the day, we should be in the Warren," Jack said, once he'd finished his crackers and drained a water bottle dry.

"And you can see Bunny," Tooth added.

"Bunny!" Baby Tooth bounced up and down where she sat. "I wanna see Bunny too! He's going to teach you to be a ninja, right?"

Jack grinned, and ruffled Baby Tooth's hair. "Something like that," he agreed. "I should probably start swimming now, though. Before people start driving by. They could notice something."

Tooth nodded, and reached for the bags. Baby Tooth got there first, though, and she started pulling out Jack's new swimming gear.

"Goggles," Baby Tooth announced. "Flippers. Purse." She giggled at the last one.

"Right," Jack said, and made a face at her. "Think you can find me a couple rocks that can go in the bag?" he asked.

"In your purse," she said again, and nodded. "Sure!"

"It's hardly a proper dive belt," Tooth pointed out.

"Yeah, but we only need it once." Jack pulled off his sweater, and then the white tee he wore underneath. The sight of his own forearms caught his attention. His muscles were still an odd sight, and watching them shift under his skin was kind of... well, trippy.

"Jeans, too," Tooth told him. "You will hate your life if you wear them wet."

Jack made a face, but obediently stripped off his pants. His boxers were almost as good as a swim suit, and at least he was wearing them. If he'd been going commando, jeans or no jeans there was no way his pants would've come off.

He pulled on the flippers, and tightened the straps around his ankles. "They feel weird," he admitted.

"You're just not used to them."

Very true. He hung the goggles around his neck, and strapped on the fanny pack. Baby Tooth returned at that point, with a cluster of fist-sized rocks for him. The rocks were heavy - and Tooth was right, it wasn't a proper dive belt at all. It'd probably do nothing to help him get to the bottom of the lake - and the whole thing felt very weird.

It didn't help that Tooth seemed to be ogling his chest and stomach. Jack crossed his arms over his chest, which _really_ didn't help.

"You need to eat more," she finally said. Jack blinked, and looked down at himself. He looked... okay, still a bit skinny, but he seemed pretty well-muscled. Six pack abs and all.

"No, really," Tooth said, in response to his dubious expression. "No matter what the media would have you believe, having your stomach muscles that well-defined is actually very unhealthy. Models do it by dehydrating and starving for a day. You just need more food in you."

"Technically that's what we've been doing for the past two, three days," Jack pointed out. "Dehydrating and starving. But I'll take your word for it, Doctor."

"You'd better." She pointed at the lake. "The water's going to be freezing, you know."

Yeah, he figured. But it wasn't going to get any warmer, so he might as well just get it over with instead.

He walked over to the lakeshore, stumbling a few times as he got used to the flippers. Fortunately the ground wasn't very rough, so he didn't fall on his face the way he kept expecting to.

The lake didn't have much of a bank, and dropped off almost immediately for at least ten, maybe twelve feet. It got deeper from there.

Jack sat down, and set his feet into the water. Strangely, it wasn't as cold as he was expecting; the chill side of lukewarm, at worst. He frowned, and slid the rest of the way in.

For a moment he stuck close to the side of the lake, hands in the grass and body wanting to float. The pouch full of rocks tugged oddly at his waist. The water, cool and feeling odd against his bare skin, lapped at his collarbones and the base of his throat.

"All good?" Tooth called. She had one arm wrapped around Baby Tooth's shoulders, and they both peered at him with bright-eyed interest.

"Yeah," he called back, and began swimming to the center of the lake. The flippers seemed to give him a little bit more power in each kick, and he quickly got the hang of swimming with them. Surprisingly enough he had to fight against the weight of the rocks, more than he'd expected.

Once he was reasonably in the center, he wet the goggles and pulled them on. The wet rubber quickly made a seal around his face, so he could see without water getting in his eyes.

"Now or never," he muttered, and dove.

He had a sudden flash of Jackson sinking under the water, of golden eyes and darkness - and shoved it away. Not now.

Not _ever_.

He swam down as far as he could, until his lungs burned and he had to go back up. The rocks tried to pull him down, but this was only attempt one; he was more than able to power his way back up to the surface. He gasped a little when he surfaced, and took several deep breaths. Once his head stopped spinning, he sucked in a lungful of air and dove again.

And again.

He quickly lost count of how many times he arrowed his way through the water towards the lakebed, clawing with his hands and kicking with his feet. His waist felt raw where the fanny pack strap rubbed his skin, and his lungs had a constant ache now. His fingers were beginning to prune.

But he felt alive. More, he felt - he didn't know how to describe it. His fingertips tingled, and while he wasn't about to describe the sensation as 'being able to see with his skin', it did feel like he could sense every ripple in the water. He could feel how close he was getting to the bottom of the lake, and it was closer every try.

Just a little bit further, a few feet, and then he'd be on the bottom.

Jack took a deep breath, and dove.

This time. He felt it, knew it, this time was it.

The rocks in his fanny pack seemed heavier, pulling him down faster, a speed he aided with every kick and every scoop of his hands. It seemed like only seconds, and then he was at the bottom, slick lake-weed against his hands and the dim, underwater twilight everywhere he looked.

It wasn't hard to see his goal. The staff was still there, shepherd's crook buried in the mud, the butt sticking up at an angle towards the surface. There wasn't much of a body left; what might have been a few ribs, and a skull covered halfway up the nose-hole.

Jack stared at the skull, or more specifically, at the eye holes. He was at the bottom of a lake and if he breathed out he'd be in a lot of trouble, but it didn't feel like it. It felt like he had all the time in the world to stare at the mortal remains of his ancestor.

A part of him wanted to grab the skull and take it to the surface with him. Give Jackson Overland the burial he'd been denied so long.

The rest of him, though, felt like flipping his ancestor off.

He'd hated Jackson. Hated him with a passion, because Jackson had everything, his freedom and his family, even had things that he didn't notice he had - like acceptance - and other things that he wouldn't want if he'd known about it, like Bunny's heart. Everything Jack hadn't had, really. Because of Jackson, Jack had been kidnapped by a psycho and forced to experience things he hadn't wanted to. Because of Jackson, Jack had lived the life of a straight man, when - much as he liked women, in a general sense - that was the last thing he wanted.

Because of Jackson, because of Pitch. Pitch wasn't here, and Jackson was. Or his bones were.

Jack flipped the skull off, and grabbed the staff. His hand tingled where he touched it.

Oddly, the staff didn't feel faintly slimy, the way wood did when it'd been under water for more than a day. He pulled it free of the mud, and it was clean. Not a speck of algae, not a hint of rot; it could have fallen into the water an hour ago instead of three centuries.

Jack looked down at the skull one last time, as the swirling mud began to obscure it. Jackson had lived his life and made his choices.

It was Jack's turn now, and he wasn't about to waste it.

* * *

He ran out of air five feet from the surface, so he came up choking and spluttering and trying his hardest not to breathe in any more water. Jack clawed at the water with one hand, and snorted and hacked and finally got in a breath that was all air, no liquid. Then another, and it felt so good.

Absently, he reached down to unclip the fanny pack, but it wasn't there. Suddenly panicked he felt for his underwear, which he was still wearing, so the fanny pack couldn't have just slipped off. Besides, they'd made sure it wouldn't.

He must have unclipped it at some point while at the bottom of the lake. It didn't really matter; it was gone, and he had to get back to solid ground.

Jack struck out for the shore, his arms and legs suddenly feeling like dead weight. It was hard to swim with the staff in one hand, but he managed it somehow. He got his arm up onto the ground, and managed to pull and kick and somehow got up out of the water.

He felt like he weighed a thousand pounds.

He felt exhausted.

He had the staff.

And the water dripping off his body was starting to freeze and turn into frost on his skin.

"What the heck?"

"Jack!" two voices said, in eerie synchronization. Did they learn that as siblings? Were there classes? Jack tilted his head to look upside down at them, and grinned.

"Hey," he said, and allowed Tooth to haul him to his feet. "How're my two favourite ladies?"

Baby Tooth pressed a hand to his side, above where there should have been minor rope burns from the fanny pack, and weren't. "You're all glittery," she said, and stared at the handprint that seemed burned into his side.

Jack braced himself with the staff, as the world began to sway with his exhaustion. Or maybe he was swaying, it was hard to tell. "That's ice for you," he said. "As glittery as diamond, but it melts in sunlight."

"You need to sleep," Tooth murmured.

"No, I need clothes before I get arrested for indecent exposure." He also needed help across the grass, though things went smoother when they remembered to take the flippers off.

Jack managed to pull his pants up, but Tooth had to handle the tricky zipper and trickier button. Baby Tooth helpfully did his shoe laces, somehow making the loops look artistic. His sweater soaked up what water was left in his hair, and promptly frosted over.

"Now we really," Tooth began, presumably about sleep or something. Jack shook his head, and took a two-handed grip on the staff.

"Now," he said, "We go to the Warren. It's safest there, Tooth. Promise."

Tooth frowned, and caught his elbow. The world was swaying again- except, no, that was definitely him. "How, Jack?"

Jack grinned, and pointed at the slight hill - not even that, just a hump of earth partly between the lake and the road. "Let's go over there."

It felt kind of like he was being supported by two fluttering birds. Baby Tooth had caught hold of his belt and was telling him which foot to move - admittedly, he was having a hard time feeling his feet, so maybe she had a point - and Tooth had an arm around his back and looked ready to catch him if he tilted too far in any direction. It was kind of weird, but nice, too.

Once they were at the not-a-hill-exactly... yeah, Jack thought Tooth maybe had something about the whole need for sleep...

What were they doing again?

"Jack?" Tooth prompted.

"Right." Warren. Jack lifted the staff and thumped it against the ground three times, concentrating. He remembered Jackson always having trouble with this part, so rarely using it, the _need_ to get to the Warren hadn't ever been really strong with him...

With Jack, though.

With Jack, he _needed_ the Warren. He needed it so badly right now - the safety, somewhere he could sleep, somewhere his girls - when had they become his? Friends, family, his, when? - could rest easy, somewhere they'd all be able to recover.

More, he needed Bunny.

The Warren opened up to that need. The tunnels were usually long, twisting things, from Jackson's memories, but the one Jack opened was short enough he could see verdant green grass, and smell warmed earth and countless flowers. The tunnel was tall enough they could walk through without brushing their hair against the ceiling.

Jack breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't sure if he was physically capable of crawling, at the moment.

They staggered into the tunnel, which began to close up after them. Jack used the staff like a cane, as he began to shake like a junky missing his fix. Or like a man freezing to death in the basement of a condemned office building, as it snowed and snowed and snowed. But this wasn't snow, this was grass, warm and lovely and he was so _cold_ but it was so _warm_.

Tooth had hold of his entire arm, it felt like, and there were noises. Jack tried to focus, he did, but he must have hit that wall. At least if he fell asleep in the Warren he wouldn't freeze to death. No matter how cold he felt.

He felt like Jackson had, when he'd been dying.

That was not a good thought. But it kept circling in his mind, refusing to go away.

Warmth approached, bright and golden like the sun. Jack turned his face in the warmth's direction, wanting nothing more than to bask in its presence, soak up the heat, drive away the cold. There was a voice, familiar and longed for, and the voice was frantic and pitched high with fear. The voice wasn't supposed to sound like that, wasn't ever supposed to sound like that, the voice was precious and beloved and the fear made Jack's heart ache.

He staggered forward, and nearly fell, but for the large hands that caught him by the shoulders. Heat spread from those hands, blazing through him. Jack blinked, his eyelids heavy but determined to see. To confirm.

"Bunny?" he murmured, staring up at that face. It was like he remembered. Better, because it was real. Bunny was real, and alive. Mostly gray, his face made broad by the fluffy fur along his jaw and cheekbones. His ears were up like a startled rabbit's, and his eyes were greener than the grass and warmer than the sun.

He was _alive_.

Jack's breath caught in a sob, and then he pushed himself up. He dropped the staff and didn't care. Wrapped his arm around Bunny's neck and stroked Bunny's cheek and pressed his lips to Bunny's mouth.

Bunny tasted like dark chocolate, like nectar and sweetbread. The short fur along his muzzle felt a little strange, but they fit together like two puzzle pieces. Jack moaned, and licked at the seam of Bunny's lips. The Pooka obliged, lips parting and tongue darting out to trace along Jack's bottom lip.

Jack pulled away, only to breathe, ready to push himself back up and into another kiss, but his heart lurched. It lurched a second time, and his lungs stopped working. He choked, and clutched at Bunny's fur, because he couldn't breathe and his heart ached and the darkness rose up.

Terrified green eyes followed him down, down. Until they couldn't follow him any further, and Jack fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I'd post this tomorrow. I lied.
> 
> So. Who wants to murder me horribly now? Wolfy Jack will start posting... In a week or two? I want to hit ten chapters before I start posting.


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